About this project

The Springfield News-Leader’s Every Child public-service journalism project aims to focus public attention on critical challenges facing children in our community, to foster discussion and to build on existing initiatives to find solutions. With help from a community advisory committee — including representatives from business, government, education, nonprofit, law enforcement, health and faith sectors — we have focused on child safety, health and poverty. This quarter, we’re promoting a wide-ranging examination of the less visible social issues, cultural challenges, customs and beliefs that impact children here. To see previous coverage, go to News-Leader.com/EveryChild.

Single-parent struggles

First of two partsToday: A big worry? How the kids are coping. Monday: A big need? Help on child-support issues.

Raising children alone was never part of the plan.

Heather Tucker married a man and thought she’d spend the rest of her life with him. The union didn’t make it to a second anniversary.

Jacqueline Beebe was already a single parent when she married for the first time. The couple had a son. The man left four months later.

Andrea Smith felt like she could not leave a troubled relationship — she had two young children to think about. But she ended up leaving precisely because she was thinking about her children’s future.

David Parrott was married with two children — until he came home from his out-of-town job to find his wife’s car repossessed because she had not been paying the bills.

Research shows the clear link between poverty and the growth in single-parent households nationally and locally. For instance, a local report found one of every two single mothers in the Ozarks lives in poverty.

Statistically, a child in a single-parent household is far more likely to experience violence, commit suicide, continue a cycle of poverty, become drug dependent, commit a crime or perform below his peers in education.

According to the Single Parent Success Foundation, a national nonprofit that encourages educational opportunities for single parents:

• 75 percent of children in chemical dependency hospitals are from single-parent families.

• More than half of all youths incarcerated in the U.S. lived in one-parent families as a child.

The News-Leader spoke to four families who are trying to escape those statistics.

Although all have diverse backgrounds and different living arrangements, all are experts at making it work. All have unique and complex schedules, with delicate balancing acts between work, play and all that comes in between.

The super mom

Only 7.7 percent of all out-of-wedlock births in the country in 2008 were to girls under the age of 18, according to the Heritage Foundation.

Heather Tucker is used to the static that comes with calling herself a single mother.

“A lot of the assumption is I was a teenage mom. I was 25 when I had Faith, and married,” she said.

Online court records show a number of protection orders against her husband while they were married. Her ex-husband was never criminally charged, but she felt she was in danger.

Faith is now 13. She has chosen not to have contact with her father. The divorce was finalized just after Faith’s first birthday.

Today, Tucker works full time while balancing coursework at Evangel University. Tucker’s mother also lives with them.

She helps with Faith, and Tucker helps when her mother has health needs. She is a cancer survivor.

The schedule at Tucker’s house is a complex one. The day of the week determines who gets the car — on days Tucker is at school, she drops off and picks up Faith from her own school. When it’s a work day for Tucker, her mother drops them both off and picks up Faith later.

This semester has been a little more hectic, but next semester Tucker will be taking night classes, allowing her to work more during the week. She’s looking forward to more family time on weekends.

Faith is well-adjusted, excelling at school and by all indications, a happy teen.

But Tucker often thinks about the other children in similar situations, in addition to wondering if Faith really is getting everything she needs.

She advocates for churches to step up, starting programs that give children with only one parent the option of spending time with other kids like them, or mentors who could provide a good example.

Maybe a support group for single parents. Or a handbook of local resources for single parents.

“As a church body, we need to do something. And I’m ready,” she said.

“We need to take it to the next level. It’s not about breathing Christ down their throat. It’s about sharing that love.”

From welfare to work

Thirty-seven percent of families led by single mothers nationwide live in poverty. Comparatively, only 6.8 percent of families with married parents live in poverty, according to data from 2009 compiled by the Heritage Foundation.

Jacqueline Beebe was 27 when she had her first son, Jaryd.

She was in Seattle then, having moved there from Phoenix. Before that, she had grown up in Branson.

She couldn’t wait to leave home, but eventually things soured between herself and Jaryd’s dad — though they’ve stayed friends throughout the 11-year-old’s life.

She decided to move back to the Ozarks, to be closer to family. Years later she met another man, married him and had another son, Jayden.

Four months after Jayden was born, his father left.

She filed for divorce. Court records show he never showed up for the hearings.

Now 3, Jayden is still too young to understand how his mother struggles to make it to work on time, get him to day care, get Jaryd to school, make sure homework is done, feed the kids, pay bills, kiss boo-boos and everything else that goes with parenting all alone.

But Jaryd does.

“I wish my 11-year-old didn’t know how poor we are,” Beebe said as she tears up.

Beebe knows all the statistics, especially for boys without a father figure. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, children who live in fatherless families use mental health services at a higher rate, have more behavior problems at school and are more likely to enter the juvenile justice system.

Beebe spent the past five years on some sort of welfare benefits but wanted to be a better example for her boys. Now she has a job, day care for Jayden, a baby-sitter for Jaryd.

And things have never been harder.

“They don’t support the people who want to go from welfare to work,” she said of welfare agencies.

There’s no real transition program from welfare to self-sustainability, Beebe said. When she got the job — 30 hours a week at a telemarketing firm — she lost her eligibility for full Medicaid.

She couldn’t afford the company’s insurance, so she went without for a time. The kids could stay on Medicaid, but she went months without prescriptions or doctor visits.

The state helps pay for child care, but even then, she can barely make ends meet.

She pays a neighbor to make sure Jaryd gets to the school bus on time. She can’t be there to do it herself. She has to leave for work before the bus lumbers down their street.

He goes to Bingham Elementary, where he’s in the fifth grade. He gets almost straight A’s and recently joined the school orchestra. He wanted to play the bass violin, but his mother couldn’t afford it. The school provided him with a loaned traditional violin.

“It’s just disappointments like that,” she said. “I couldn’t give my son the choice of instruments he wanted.”

There are days when she wonders why she even tries. She could quit her job, contribute nothing.

But she wants to be more than that for her kids.

“I don’t want to be at home on welfare. I want to be at work,” she said.

“There are a lot of people who want to genuinely get ahead. And I’m one of them. ... We don’t want handouts. I’m not looking for handouts. I’m just looking for a hand to help.”

Despite the daily struggles, Beebe considers herself lucky.

Her mother helps a lot, buying her a new outfit for her interview for this story. Her mother often buys clothes for the boys when Beebe can’t.

With the most recent cold snap, her mother had to buy Jaryd some winter clothes. He had already outgrown the ones from last year.

Beebe’s sister is equally as vital. She takes the kids for a night when Beebe needs a break.

There’s support outside her blood relatives as well, though she considers many as good as family.

He’s taught Jaryd how to ride a bike and bought him a fishing pole. Devin is the male figure in life Jaryd needs, Beebe said.

When Jayden is old enough, she hopes he’ll have a Big Brother, too. Someone to show him how to be a good man — better than the ones she’s encountered.

“I hope they’ve learned enough from what they’ve seen their mother go through to be good men who support their families. That’s my job, to make them that,” she said.

The champion

Boys who witness domestic violence as children are twice as likely to abuse their own partners and children when they become adults. Thirty to 60 percent of perpetrators of domestic violence also abuse the children in the home, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Looking back now, Andrea Smith can see the gradual change in their relationship.

He started small, beating her down emotionally. Over time, it escalated more and more.

“When I met him, I didn’t think anything like this would happen,” Smith said.

“I felt in some way I deserved it. I didn’t start out that way.”

Eventually she wasn’t allowed to look anyone else in the eye while they were out in public. If she was somewhere without him, he’d let her know he was making sure she didn’t go anywhere else, talk to anyone else. He controlled everything.

But she couldn’t leave. While the couple was not married, she had two very young kids to think about.

She tried to get out a few times, but he always convinced her to come back. He told her they would be better. If she would just stop messing up, he wouldn’t be so mad all the time.

She had no idea other resources existed. She’d never heard of Harmony House, a local shelter and domestic violence program.

She said she never felt like she was treated like a victim, so she convinced herself that it must really be her fault. She just needed to be a better person, a better woman.

So she tried and tried and tried.

“I don’t know what it was. I just snapped out of it one day,” she said, explaining that she began to think about her children, now school-age.

“I didn’t want my daughter growing up that way, seeing her mother treated that way and thinking that was how a woman should be treated. And I didn’t want my son to think that was OK either.”

For the first few months, she slept on her parents’ couch with her kids close by. She was determined to leave for real this time, but doubt often crept in.

“I did question what I was doing, how strong I was,” she said.

She pulled herself together, went to school. She wanted to help people and started looking for an internship opportunity.

A classmate recommended Harmony House. She volunteered for a few months, then a job at the shelter opened up. She jumped at the opportunity to help women with similar histories.

She agreed to be part of this story for a similar reason — to reach women who might be in the same situation she found herself.

“You can be happy,” she said.

“You and your kids will be happy. It will take some work, but it’ll be better.”

The single father

Unmarried fathers have grown as heads of the household in Springfield. In 2000, there were 1,328 families with children led by unmarried men. In 2010, that number grew to 1,674, according to U.S. Census data.

David Parrott grew up as the oldest of 10.

He knew from a young age the responsibility involved with having children.

So when he settled down, married and had children, he never considered the possibility of handling that responsibility on his own.

In hindsight, he wishes he had seen the signs sooner.

In construction all his life, Parrott was working in Kansas City for some time when work was hard to come by in Springfield. He slept in his van, coming home every other weekend to see his growing family. The Parrotts had a young son and baby daughter.

While in K.C., he’d deposit his paycheck in the couple’s mutual bank account. He let his wife take care of the finances — he saw his role as being the breadwinner.

So he was shocked to find a $1,500 unpaid utility bill and unpaid loan on her car. He didn’t know about that until the vehicle was repossessed.

He filed for divorce.

While court proceedings carried on, his soon-to-be ex-wife took the kids with her to her own mother’s on the East Coast.

A few months later, in 2003, Parrott got the call from authorities late one morning that he needed to come pick up the kids or they would be put in foster care.

Elizabeth is now 13. She celebrated her birthday just this week.

Parrott is proud of his daughter, whom he describes as a good girl who insists on wearing dresses, doesn’t listen to bad music and is active in church.

“She demands we pray before every meal,” he said.

But he worries about her often.

To be honest, he doesn’t know much about what she’s going through right now — girl stuff.

“Dad doesn’t know a whole lot about that,” he said.

So he’s been trying to find a way to reach out to her, give her someone to talk to and get her out of the house. She was placed with Big Brothers, Big Sisters a few weeks ago.

The match has been great, but Parrott still worries about what Elizabeth will be like when she’s older, how she’ll handle having a boyfriend.

“She hasn’t seen a mom-dad thing. It’s always just been a single parent,” he said.

His son Ryan is 17 and severely autistic. Parrott has been working to get adult guardianship over him when he turns 18. Adult guardianship is the legal right to make decisions for someone the court rules is unable to make those decision on his or her own.

But that takes attorneys, court costs. The lowest estimate he’s gotten is $1,500. He has $900 coming in per month.

It’s not that Parrott wants to be handed anything.

“I’m not one to go out there and get free government stuff,” he said.

But he wishes there were more programs geared to single fathers. An Internet search for “single mom Springfield MO” brings up grants, programs, outreach opportunities and support groups. That same search for a single father yields dating websites.

“Single dads are out there,” he said. “A lot of times, we just fall between the cracks.”